Lake holds mystery of artist's death

Lake holds mystery of artist's death

ALGONQUIN PARK - Almost a hundred years after Tom Thomson's death, some Canadians will not accept that the landscape artist simply drowned in Canoe Lake.

Recast as a solitary, Byronic hero, he could have had love interests, treacherous rivals, and petty-minded enemies who could have plotted his demise.

On the 91st anniversary that his body surfaced, I hoped that Gregory Klages, a Toronto academic, could accompany me through the conjecture and fact and eventually lead me to Thomson's grave, where the artist was briefly buried on the cusp of his 40th birthday.

A PhD with a deep knowledge of Canadian culture -- and a Thomson-mystery afficionado-- Mr. Klages created Death on a Painted Lake: The Tom Thomson Tragedy, a Web site that leaves no detail, diary entry or letter unturned. Although the site is often compared to the television series CSI, it is a whodunnit more akin to Clue -- in this case, it is a parlour game set in a gossipy, backwater logging village called Mowat.

As we set out for our three-hour drive, I discover that Mr. Klages is a former DJ. We discussed the enduring dark fascination for rock stars who died young, but between us, Thomson was the only Canadian cultural figure we could name who met an untimely end. The British have Percy Bysshe Shelley, who also drowned at a young age in similar mysterious circumstances; the Americans have Jackson Pollock, James Dean, and Kurt Cobain and so many others.

Canadians, I suggested, must savour their rare, doom-struck icon.

But Mr. Klages, wearing a bilingual T-shirt that read, "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History," did not buy my theory. "It's just a really interesting mystery, like the death of Elvis or Marilyn," he said. "There is just a fishy set of circumstances, and you have some reason to believe that the murder could have been covered up."

Among the various theories offered are that stingy landlord Shannon Fraser, loath to return a generous loan, accidentally killed Thomson after a fight and dragged his body to the water; that the artist took his own life after panicking at the prospect of marriage or, even, that he died at the hands of Martin Bletcher, Jr., with whom he had an ongoing argument over avoiding military service.

The veracity of any of these particular theories does not matter so much to Mr. Klages, however. "

I don't care about The Mystery," he said. "I don't care how he died. He was a great artist. That's what I care about."

The day was clear and cool, the water choppy. It was not a cruel afternoon for the morbidly curious to paddle in circles, looking for a landmark that we hoped would lead us to the site.

Mr. Klages had come to the site once before, but another guide had found it for him. As a teen at camp in the area, I, too, once hiked to that muddy knoll, a pilgrimage many honour with the same stoner solemnity as visiting Jim Morrison at Pere Lachaise. Yet 25 years later, its whereabouts were as foggy to me as the lyrics of Morrison's Peace Frog.

After an hour of bobbing on the water, the romance was beginning to wane. "It's as if they don't want anyone to find it," said Mr. Klages.

Totally lost, we spotted a woman swimming near her dock. Residents would want to keep the ghoulish riffraff out, you'd think, but she obliged, calling out to her husband, who was doing yard work.

"Paddle around the corner for a mile, or maybe half a mile, and you'll see a clearing," he shouted. "Head up the road and take a right."

The vagueness seemed deliberate, but with some dumb luck, we found the first clearing. We trudged through the boggy growth, where underfoot was once the hamlet of Mowat. We walked along the ghost trail of train tracks, peeping behind every bush for that path and found it.

Finally, we arrived at the forlorn little graveyard, which sits in the back of a forest. For what turned to be an overnight stay before his family exhumed and moved him to Leith, Ont., the body of the artist rested near the soul of an eight-year-old boy who died of diphtheria, and a logger.

Next to Thomson's ascetic, lonely cross, there was a penny, which brought us to the topic of Winnie Trainor, a cottager whom Thomson was apparently going to marry.

"Residents say that Winnie Trainor used to come here after Tom died, and if anyone left flowers, she'd get rid of them," said Mr. Klages.

Even now, when dozens of pilgrims must slink through here every summer, the site is pristine, even though the park does not officially assume responsibility for the gravesite.

We again glanced at the penny. No doubt that it, too, would inexplicably vanish.

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